When Ruth Stone,
life-long poet,
was working in the fields of Virginia,
she could sense a poem
rumbling the horizon.

She felt it, the way one feels an earthquake,
speeding at her across the landscape.

And she knew there was only one thing to do,
to run like hell, towards the house.

The race was on, to get there
and find a pen and paper
before the poem reached her.

And sometimes she did.

But sometimes she didn't,
and the poem barreled on through
in a great torrent,
in search of another poet.

And sometimes she thought she had missed it,
but reached out with her other hand
as she brought her pen to paper,
and seized that poem by the tip of the tail
before it could escape
and flung it down,
where it appeared in reverse,
tail-end to nose-tip.